Second lecture, part: 1

Maha Alfahad
Let's start. The title of this lecture is what? Can you see? What is the title?
Yes, it is a--
Do we make decisions in language teaching or not? How can we base-- when there
are so many decisions and most importantly, these are close related to syllabus
design. In choosing the so called, the content of the course, because syllabus is no
more than the content of the course. We call it syllabus or the content of the course.
Now the idea is, how can we make decisions when it comes to syllabus design?
When it comes to choosing what to teach. Why do we have to identify the
component of language?
Khansa answered: I assume that we find them in order to arrange them in order to
know what students know of them and to teach them what they don't know, to build
the constructive--
But are we concerned with the teaching at the moment in that case?
Yes we are--
And the decisions?
Yes.
Just a minute. I'm talking about choosing a syllabus. Obviously, the content of a
course, or the syllabus of a course, would be selected items because a syllabus can
be defined as a set of selected items… (Khansa interrupted the prof) 

Just a minute. A syllabus is a selected, sequenced and related items selected for a
particular group of learners. That would be the syllabus. The question is, what are
the items selected? Why do we study components of language? Because we have to
choose, are these things from different components? Obviously, we must describe
those components of language. The people, who describe language or components
of language, will be the linguistics. They are applied linguists and it shows from the
total amount of knowledge of language, certain items to be included in a course. Do
you understand? What does knowledge of language involve? What does it consist
of? And you don't have to answer both questions. Can you point to someone who is
absentminded and ask again the question. The question again, "Help me."
Okay, all of you are perfect, super human beings. Don't worry. It seems to me that
you look upon me as if I am someone who has never taught a group before. Once
again, choose another colleague to answer the question. What does knowledge of
language involve? What does it consist of?
Dania answered!

Syntactic features. In other words, grammar. What else?

Lexical items.

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Lexical items - vocabulary.

Phonology, or phonetics. Now, these are the only things which constitute
knowledge of language?

The idea is What you have mentioned is no more the linguistic component. Nothing
more. What does it mean? This is what we are asking about. What means, by
communicative knowledge or language. When we say-- just a minute. When we're
talking about knowledge of language, you can call it knowledge of language or you
can call it communicative competence. At the moment we applied linguists call it
intercultural knowledge of language – which is in other words communicative
competence. Now you have mentioned that all the subcomponents of one them
which is linguistic knowledge or linguistic competence. Anyway, assuming that
even if you make a mistake, I don't take care. The most important thing is that you
participate. who volunteers to answer. Besides communicative competence, tell us
about more components of communicative competence? What about Tahni? She
has just presented all the components of communicative competence. You were
listening to one of your colleagues presenting the components of the knowledge of
language. She gave many models. She explained many models. None of you
stopped her. Why? Why shouldn't you stop her and ask her what does this mean?
You don't understand? I want to Tahni who gave the presentation to answer. What
are the other components apart from linguistic competence? Who coined the term
linguistic competence?
Chomsky.
Noam Chomsky. It was Noam Chomsky who coined the term linguistic competence.
The word competence means ability. And he presented this component and said that
linguistic theory cannot describe any other component. Linguistic theory should be
confined into the study of forms, the study of syntax, the study of phonology, the
study of morphology, the structure of words, the study of lexical items. That is what
he focused on. Hymes, for example. Did he mention something?
Yes, he did.
Did he coin a certain term?

Hymes shows or introduced the most important term in your course. It was he who
presented this term. He isn't a linguist, by the way. He is a conversational analyst.
Anthropology, yes. So he isn't originally a linguist, In linguistic theory you should
not just confine yourself to knowledge of form, of syntax, morphology, phonology,
etc. No, it’s much more than that. The ability to use those forms appropriately in
social situations, to perform the speech acts appropriately in social situations, can be
called sociolinguistic competence. Both of them, linguistic as well as sociolinguistic
competence, for what he said communicative competence.

why do we have to identify and characterize the components of communicative

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competence?

The answer is quite simple. Language curriculum.

Teachers are not necessarily responsible for designing curriculum. As we know,

teachers are always considered the implementers of curriculum. They use a text
book that they call curriculum, but this book is not a curriculum. Language curricula
derive their contents or syllabus mainly through what? Through knowledge of
language.

So this is the first reason for studying or identifying the components and
characterizing them of communicative competence. The first reason is that we
derive curricula from them. We derive syllabuses, in particular, the content of the
curriculum. Because curriculum is broader than syllabus. Syllabus is just the
content. And we derive it from our knowledge of language. What linguists have
described - number two, second reason - the study of knowledge of language is the
realm of linguistics. In other words, linguists are the people who study knowledge of
language. And number three, that's why progress made in syllabus designed has
always been associated with, goes hand-in-hand with, advances made in linguistics.
For example, in the past, that is before Hymes, in the past-- I mean before Hymes.

We had one kind of syllabus which was known as grammatical syllabus, or

structural of syllabus. Why? Because at that time linguists, particularly those who
followed Noam Chomsky, only could describe syntax phonology and morphology.
Later on, when progress was made in pragmatics and the progress was made in
language teaching, particularly in the field of knowledge of language, Hymes
proposed the communicative competence. But at that time, communicative
competence was confined to different speech acts, how to request in English, how to
compliant in English, how to greet in English, how to introduce yourself in English,
how to make an offer in English, how to invite in English - the different speech acts.
Hymes became the so-called?
A student gave an incorrect answer:
The teacher corrected her:

Notional syllabus.
He said:
‫ !! يا ُخسارة‬
Because nobody gave you an idea about the development of syllabus design. It
started with structural syllabus. Then came notional functional syllabus. I will give
you even the picture or the photos of the people who developed this. Chomsky's
linguistic competence, what did it consist of?

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It is idea about linguistic competence or knowledge of language occurred in the
book called Aspects of Syntax. Have you heard about it? Have you studied syntax or
not?
Yes.
Now, generative or transformational syntax. It was introduced in Aspects of Syntax
originally in 1964. Got the idea? How did he define linguistic competence? For the
knowledge of language, Noam Chomsky coined the term linguistic
competence. Take care, because I'm going to ask you questions like these. I will say,
it was Noam Chomsky, Hymes, for example, or maybe somebody else like David
Wilkins, coined the term linguistic competence? You understand? I will ask you
multiple-choice items because I remembered you made many mistakes in writing an
essay type question - answering a essay type questions.

Once again, who coined the term linguistic competence?

Chomsky.
Noam Chomsky. Before Noam Chomsky, nobody talked about linguistic
competence. And he said-- he made a distinction also between competence and
performance. Performance is related to using the language in social situations, and
he said that performance. Once again, performance is something related to using
language in social situations. He said that when you perform, you can make many
mistakes even if you are a native speaker. You can have false starts. You can have
slips of a tongue. And therefore, linguists cannot describe this aspect. Therefore,
Noam Chomsky dismissed altogether the study of performance of language in social
situations. "I can't describe that." That's what he said. Now, linguistic competence
refers, and this is his own definition of linguistic competence: The ideal speaker
hearer knowledge of his or her language irrespective of the faulty characteristics of
performance. And who is that ideal speaker hearer?
It's the linguist.
Professor Noam Chomsky himself. You understand?
Chomsky's linguistic competence was confined to knowledge of forms. And the
knowledge of forms includes knowledge of sentence structure, studied by what?
A student answered: Syntax.
The doctor continues: Syntax. Whereas knowledge of words structure or the
structure of words is morphology! And the Knowledge of the sound system is
phonology. Now, I want a volunteer to answer my question. How did he define—I
mean, Noam Chomsky define linguistic competence?
A student answered.
Knowledge of the ideal speaker hearer of his or her language. That is, the ideal
native speaker knowledge.

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We want to know who is that ideal speaker hearer. (a student interrupted). The
doctor replied: You are quite right. How many branches? How many components or
sub-components are there of linguistic competence?
A student answered: three or four.
The doctor replied: Just a minute. Syntax deals with what? Once again, syntax
means what? What does it mean?
Sentence formation.
It's the Knowledge of sentence structure. Which branch of linguistics study
knowledge of the structure of words?

It's Morphology. Which branch of linguistics study knowledge of the sound system.
And what is a unit of the sound system?

The use of the forms appropriately in social situations was simply excluded from the
linguistic theory. What does this mean? Does this mean that Noam Chomsky was
ready to study the use of language in social situations?
A student answered:  He only cares about competence.
That's right. He was concerned with competence, not performance. So he excluded
altogether the study of forms or the use of language forms in social situations. Do
you know-- I did know an anecdote which will say this. Even when studying syntax,
once he visited us at Lancaster university as a visitor, and I was doing my MA there,
so what did-- one sentence did he leave us? Can you write down this sentence?.It's
funny, you will start laughing. Can you write it down? Colorless green ideas sleep
furiously. He said that this is a grammatical sentence despite the fact that it isn't
meaningful. But it is grammatical according to linguistic and English
syntax. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. Do ideas sleep? but the idea is that if
you look at each slot, you can see that the figure of the slot is correct. Colorless is a
modifier. It occurs and modifies a noun. Colorless green ideas are two modifiers,
they precede what? Nouns. And sleep is a verb. The first noun group is considered
the subject of the sentence, right? Sleep is the verb, and furiously is an adverb that
describes the verb. So syntactically it is acceptable. Semantically is it? No, but that's
not my concern. Can we imagine such a thing? It is a sort of study of language?
Now, Implications in language teaching was minimal. You know implications of
Noam Chomsky's theory of knowledge of language or linguistic competence, for
language teaching was minimal. Why?

During that lecture he gave at Lancaster. One of our colleagues asked him a
question. What is the implication of your theory because it was a program in applied
linguistics like yours. So one of them said, asking him a question, and what is the
implication of your theory of linguistic competence in language teaching? Do you
know what his answer was, what? He said, "I am not concerned with teaching
English. I have no idea about teaching English, but I'm teaching it." Later on, he was

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interviewed by somebody in the BBC world. And the announcer kept asking him
about the implications of his theory in language teaching. Because the announcer
was very clingy - in other words, he kept asking him the same question - but
certainly there must be some implications for language teaching in your theory. And
he said, "Honestly speaking, the only recommendation for language learning or
language acquisition is to be exposed to a rich linguistic environment."
what does a rich linguistic environment mean? That is something that we
understand at the moment, but at that time, they knew nothing about that. Noam
Chomsky was not interested in language teaching. And it wasn't he who talked
about negotiation? It was somebody else.

He did not say native speaker! He said It's exposure to a rich linguistic
environment. I agree with him by the way. I don't agree with people who introduce
what is known as deliberate courses. Courses like drops of rain on a very hot day in
the desert. That is to learn just two periods or three periods a week to learn English.
Do you think that you really learn English?
No.
 I believe in rich exposure to the target language. Although he did not say that
because he was an expert in motivation. The oldest type of syllabi- tell me, what is
the oldest type of syllabus?

That's structural syllabus. You know why? Because this was the only aspect of
linguistics or knowledge of language which was described at that time. In the '60s
and the '50s, the syllabus consisted of a set of structures and a set of words. We've
had a topic and the topic was written, or the essay was written by a native speaker
divided into sections. Each section was given in the book, just a paragraph or two
paragraphs, and then you have comprehension questions. That's all. That is how
English teaching consisted of in the past. Got the idea? Why? And we used to study
grammar and we learned rules by heart. Why? Simply because the only aspect of
knowledge of language described by linguists at that time was syntax. Even
morphology was not really well known.

Now we have finished Noam Chomsky. Now what about Hymes? In 1970- it was in
1969, but as you know at that time there were no computers. There were only
typewriters and the censor, if you have heard about the censor in the paper and of
course you haven't seen such a thing. The idea is that when we were at Lancaster,
Professor [sorry couldn't hear the name], he was the one teaching us the course on
applied linguistics and he came from a conference in the United States with a paper
that paper. The paper was entitled "On Communicative Competence". If you are
interested in reading it, it has been published at least 20 times in different sources.
We had that copy-- it looked like the bible for applied linguists at that time. Hymes
had rejected the distinction between competence and the performance. He said,
"Why? Why do you exclude using language in social situations from the study of
linguistics?" At that time, some people published two very important books. Have
you heard about somebody called John Austin?

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Yes.
You heard about him in the study of pragmatics. John Austin gave some lectures. He
didn't know that he was talking about speech acts. Ten lectures at Oxford University
and the ten lectures were published after his death in the year 1957. The title was
quite simple and attractive because the title was chosen by his students who attended
that course. What was the title of the book? "How to Do Things with Words".
Listen. How to Do Things with Words. Can we act with words? Yes.
Yes, with speeches.
This was the time in which speech act theory was introduced, by who? By a
philosopher of language, not a linguists. John Austin wasn't a linguist. He was a
philosopher of language. In 1969, one of the students of John Austin completed his
PhD dissertation and published it in 1968. In 1968, he published his dissertation
under the title, Speech Acts: - another part of the title - An Essay in the Philosophy
of Language. This student was called John Searle. You probably have studied that in
pragmatics. So John Austin and John Searle were the people who introduced the
speech acts, not as part of pragmatics. Nobody heard about pragmatics. When
Hymes rejected the distinction between competence and performance and coined the
term communicative competence, he was influenced by Austin's books.

By people who were not linguists. At that time, pragmatics was not known - was not
born yet.

According to the term communicative competence, he refers to--?

He refers to who?
The students answered: Austin.
The prof replied: No.
Noam Chomsky.?
No!
He refers to Hymes. we see that Hymes rejected the distinction between
competence and the performance which was proposed by Noam Chomsky and he -
that's Hymes - coined the term communicative competence to refer to knowledge of
forms, linguistic competence, Chomsky, and the knowledge of how to use those
forms appropriately in social situations - sociolinguistic competence, or call it
pragmatic competence if you like. But he did not call it pragmatic competence.
Why?

Because it wasn't known. The term pragmatics was not invented. Is that clear?

Now let's move on. There are rules of use and this is not my sentence. I have just

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 quoted the sentence of Hymes from his paper On Communicative Competence.
"There are rules of use without which the rules of form will be useless." Can you
understand the meaning of this sentence?
Yes.
There are rules of use - that's to say, "You linguists, you need to study performance
as well as competence. you need to come up with rules of use." He predicted the
emergence of pragmatics, or the birth of pragmatics. Pragmatics was still a branch
philosophy of language. Implications are nearly achieved<( not sure of this sentence
). The coinage of the term communicative competence by Hymes has further
implications. That is to say very deep implications. Hymes notion of communicative
competence, plus advances made in the study of pragmatics, particularly the Speech
Acts Theory, led to what? To the formation of the committee entrusted with
designing the council of the notional functional syllabi.
I repeat again. I know that you haven't understood, but although I have given it to
you as if it were a sort of formula or an equation. [Out of ten?], shall I say this
again?
Yes.

Part two
Meshail Almasri

Why don't you ask me? Once again, I'll say it again. Hymes notion of
communicative competence in which you said that knowledge of language consists
of linguistic competence plus sociolinguistic competence or pragmatic competence,
how to use those forms in social situations appropriately. Now Hymes notion of
communicative competence, plus advances made in the study of speech act theory
led to….. led to what? You tell me. What kind of syllabus? What was… just a
minute. What was the first type of syllabus used in language teaching?

Structural one….not now .then at that time, in the early '70s, because I lived there at
that time I used to attend with the team - the European team, headed by David
Wilkins. He was my professor at Reading University then. And I tried then,,I tried to
understand the project. The project was a very important project for the European
Union countries. You know the European Union or not?
Yes, of course
A team comprising members from different European countries came to design a
syllabus, not in terms of structures, but also, and in addition to structures, notions
and functions,
that is the emergence of committee, make sure how you pronounce it. Take care,
committee. Not a committee. A committee, entrusted with designing the Council of
the overall functional syllabi. And who was the leader?

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David--
Somebody called David Wilkins. You will see his photo now. You will be surprised.
He is more than 90 years old. What did they do? They designed the syllabi for
teaching students in different countries of Europe the different notions and functions
in addition to the structures. Can anybody view? I want a genius student to tell me
the difference between notion and function?
Yes. Notion refers to ideas.
Ideas? You are quite right. Can you give me an example of an idea that can be called
a notion?
About education, about subject, about--
Yeah, a notion. Education is a notion? Maybe.

Who is this?
Dania
Thank you very much for making this contribution. But can I give you an example
from linguistics? Have you heard about the notion of certainty, how do you express
the notion.
Yes.
The idea. Again, how do you heard about the notion of futurity in English? How
many forms can we use in order to express futurity?
Dania : Will and shall
Doctor: No
Because will and shall have different functions other than futurity.
Dania : verb to be
You are quite right. Thank you very much indeed, verb to be + going to + infinitive

are one of the forms that can realize the notion of the futurity, but it expresses future
intention. If someone says, "I am going to get married next week," it means it's my
intention - future intention. Again, it can be used for expressing something that is
going to happen in future, depending on signs of the situation. For example, if you
look at the sky and you find that the sky is very cloudy and there are storms, you can
say, "I think it is going to rain." That is to say, reporting a result of something
happening at the moment, the result is going to happen in the future. For example,
looking at a lady with a child can say, "I think that she's going to have a baby-- have
a baby by a time, but to have that baby very soon, not later than two weeks." Judging
from her appearance, he was able to predict something for the future. This is called,
this is called futurity, notion futurity. There is nothing……(not clear). But there is
always the notion of futurity. Which I mean that you can express with language. Is

9
that clear? Now, notions and functions means what?
Students: doing something with words
Doctor : Precisely, speech act , functions means speech act
The publication of David Wilkins booklet, it's just a good book. It's available at the
moment online free of charge and you can download it. I have probably the only
copy and the only printed copy, simply because I was there at the moment and I had
to buy it. Notional syllabuses in 1975. They started working out syllabi for the
European Union for students of each country to learn the languages of other
countries. Do you understand? 
Language unity ,This is a very important point except in the middle east
Nobody values the how much important factor that unify us which is standard,
unfortunately. But people who got 22 different languages are trying to teach English
to all the different countries’.
The development of many notional functional syllabi for ESP and EAP courses. ESP
stands for what? English for specific purposes.

And EAP is an acronym, which means? English for academic purposes. You are
quite right. During the '70s, people were mainly concerned with identifying the
needs, or designing the syllabi of students studying English for a specific purpose -
English for aviation, English for nursing, English for medicine, etc.. And EAP would
be English for academic purposes. This is a sort of course that is taught for example
to students of computer science at university. Do you understand? yes
Now, notions and functions. Here you are. Both they have units of content (not
clear)in designing a notional functional syllabus . If you read that book published by
David Wilkins, later on after they have already designed the European Union courses
or syllabi, he published that book and following his publication, there were so many
needs analysis to ties (not clear). The years following the publication of David
Wilkins book, Notional Syllabi, starting from 1975 until 1980 were the period during
which needs analysis was an offer (not clear)in applied linguistic research. Can you
do needs analysis at the moment?
Students : NO
Doctor: For a PhD I would say, "I'm afraid I can't accept it. I can't supervise you."
This is something that leads back to the late '80s, late 70s sorry, you can do it in 1701
but now we can't view such a study, It's outdated.
Notions refer to ideational concepts. It's invested by linguistic forms such as a notion
of certainty, the notion of time, the notion of contrast. Although it is …………..(not
clear), it is not very ……………..(not clear) However, do you know those
connectors that bind the two clauses, which express contrasts? That's a notion of
contrasts, the notion of futurity etc.. now understand what I mean by notions and
functions.

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Function essentially refers to the illocutionary force of the utterance. Anybody who
is ready to participate?
And who is this that's going to speak?
Tahanai : not clear
Thank you very much. You just mixed up the two things, don’t worry and I'm quite
sure that you will still remember something from pragmatic course. And I'm going to
revise it for Delayel : not clear
Doctor : Thank you. Don't worry .
The idea is that I know that they can be that these ideas can be easily forgotten.

We have three acts. The locutionary force, or the locutionary act which is the act of
saying In really simple words ,when you say something, this is a locution. The
sounds you produce , the string of the sounds you produce is a locution, simply ,act
of saying, when you produce sounds you act. I'll show you that this is true, when
you produce sounds. Just imagine that you are at home and you are cooking
something in the kitchen and you are enjoying cooking. You might say-- you may
start singing, or just making sounds, and if someone asks you what are you doing?
What are you saying? You might say, "Well, I'm just singing." I'll give you a better
example. Imagine there is a husband and wife who have got some sort of worry over
something. They're worried over something. And the husband tries to sort of get
them reconciled. The husband wants to get the husband wants his wife reconciled.
He keeps saying jokes or saying something to her, something funny to her to make
her laugh, but his wife does not produce a singing sound. This is an act. Keeping
silent is an act, isn't it? It simply means I'm not interested in what you are
saying. What if she shouted at you? This is an act isn't it? It's an act of saying.
What about your baby? When your baby starts crying,, the act of crying consists of
sounds, isn't it? It's just a sound. But does it have a meaning? Hello? Does it have a
meaning or not? You know when you find your baby crying, you know that he or she
is either in need of changing her nappies, or he is very hungry. The act of crying is a
locution – a locutionary act. The act of crying because he's in need of something is
the illocution of act, which is the so called, the intention of the speaker. What is the
intention of a child, which she or he cries?
Students :To get his mother attention…… ..to get what he needs.
That's right.
And what about the effect of what you say on the hearer? That is called the
perlocutionary act.
Act of saying is loctution. Intention of the speaker is illocution. Effect of what you
say on the hearer is perlocutionary act. These three different acts were proposed by
John Austin but rejected by John Searle.

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There are functions of language can be speech acts or macro versus microfunctions,
We are going to talk about that. Where can the highlighted dilemma of the
mismatched of both notions and functions on one hand and there linguistic
realizations. What does this statement mean?
Okay. Think about the act of the requesting.
Student : It's a function.
This is a function. How many linguistic realizations are there for requesting a cup of
tea? Can you guess how many forms can you use in order to request Could you?
Would you? Please do and so? David Wilkins sat at his desk and started looking at
the different linguistic realizations of asking for the salt and a cup of tea. Do you
know how many linguistic realizations he could think of? 45 linguistic realizations..
45 structures …So what did he say because of this? When it comes to designing the
syllabus, which one are you going to choose? at the beginning, in the first course, in
the April course? Which one are you going to introduce in the second level, in the
third level …etc. the idea is that you should look for criteria to do this and this is
extremely difficult, because you can start by something which is impolite.
The idea is that you… which one should you actually sequence? Should you
sequence forms or sequence functions? difficult, very difficult. The mismatch
between them is very difficult. That’s why the notional-functional syllabus didn’t
succeed although people called it the product oriented communicative language
teaching, which was dominant in the 70s. Product oriented because it aimed
specifying what learners should learn by the end of the course. The syllabus in terms
of structures and notions and functions. In the early '70s, it was believed that
designing a syllabus in terms of notions and functions will automatically lead to a
more communicative classroom. That’s why people called it communicative
language teaching at that time, and a communicative syllabus. But after all decade
,after working on different syllabi and producing many lists of notions and functions
and structures, in the year 2001, the people who working hand-in-hand with David
Wilkins at the time, now they are professors. They were still demonstrators. One of
them is called professor Johnson. Actually he's now at Lancaster University. The
second was called Keith Morrow. Keith Morrow and Keith Johnson published a
book in the year 2000, and in the introduction to the book, they wrote the following.
Listen.
The people who worked in the same department with David Wilkins, they said one
can be notional functional, the same syllabus without being communicative in the
classroom. And they can be communicative in the classroom without having a
syllabus in terms of notions and functions. One can be notional functional without
being communicative, and can be communicative without being notional functional.
And in the year 2003, a world famous applied linguist called Henry Widdowson ,
said a key note address at international conference held in Copenhagen. He said, will
you like to write the sentence? Can you write this sentence?" It reminds you of that

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change, that happened at the beginning of the 80s. That was in the year 2003. He
said…shall I dictate it?
Yes
People (he means applied linguists) who were trying... T-R-Y-I-N-G to bring about
(it means cause to happen) people who were trying to bring about, he said, a
breakthrough.. Breakthrough is a fighting term. In Arabic it means (tha3’ra fi l 7arb)
in war we had a sort of war between two countries. ,and one of the armies who were
fighting can create a breakthrough in the other army. breakthrough on what?
Student: Excuse me professor It's written in the slides
Doctor: Ah, shall I repeat it again, I couldn't hear your voice. 
People who were trying to find a breakthrough in the foreign language classroom
through a syllabus design ,(syllabus design in terms of notions and functions) were
fighting on the wrong front . In other words, people who were trying to cause
communication to happen in the foreign language classroom, through syllabus
design in terms of notions and functions, were fighting on the wrong front. Why?
Because what it's communicative, can only be determined by the learning experience
that occurs in the classroom. What I'm saying now will be clear later on. Take care.
Now, gradually applied linguistics began to realize that one can be notional
functional without being communicated and can be communicated without being
notional functional, where or who made this comment? Johnson and Morrow in
1981 , I said that.
In 1984-- sorry, it was in 1983, Widdowson declared that, people who have been
trying to bring about a breakthrough in the foreign languages classroom through
syllabus design in terms of…….. have been fighting on the wrong front.
Emergence of task-based syllabi, three waves of research constitute the bases of the
development of strategic competence.
The strategic competence as a component of communicative competence. What are
these two waves, or three waves of research? The first one, Foreigner talk discourse.
You must have studied krashen’s monitor model, have you or not?
Yes.
krashen’s monitor model in second language acquisition at least , one of the basic
marks, Stephen Krashen, loves Saudi Arabia very much, he has been in Saudi Arabia
many times and the (Sharekat l Khaleej) invited him twice and Stephen Krashen
produced a model of second language acquisition as soon as …..
Student: monitor model
Doctor: yes, the monitor model

One of his hypothesis is that the most important or the necessary condition for
language acquisition is to be exposed to input that's made comprehensible through

13
negotiations. You remember this or not? 
Students :Yes
Doctor:
Good
The idea is to ask the question, where did he get that hypothesis from? He got it from
studies of foreigner talk discourse. Many overseas students who went to do MAs and
PhDs under his supervision in the United States, probably people from Saudi Arabia
might have contributed to this, conducted studies about the sort of language used by
native speakers when they speak or talk to a non-native speaker. Have you ever
heard a conversation between a native speaker and a non-native speaker?
Students :Yes.
Doctor: it the same as….
Dania: they simplify what they say
Doctor: yes,they always simplify what they say. 
This was the wave of research which went on during the '70s. That is why he
published his monitor model in the year 2000-- sorry in the year 1980.
The first book about the monitor model was published in 1980. But the idea………,
do you understand? Please, if you don't understand, ask me Okay? Yes
now let's go on.
The second wave of research was research in communication strategies. Again,
communication strategies are strategies used by the learner in order to do what? To
make up for gaps in his or her knowledge of the target language. For example,
appeal for assistance is a communication strategy. A non-native learner might
appealing for assistance, or request assistance from the native speaker. For example,
if he or she doesn't know the meaning of a word. There are so many other examples
of communication strategies. Who led this wave of research - the second wave of
research on communication strategies? Strategies use it to make up for compensate
for gaps in your knowledge of the target language. Elaine Tarone. I think you can
guess from her name that she's a Jew. It is really Jew.
The third wave of research is a research on language and learning these strategies,,
by who? If you have studied a second language acquisition, who is the pioneer ?
Student: Rebbeca Oxford,
Doctor :but before Rebbeca Oxford? Who?
Doctor: for the time being Rebbeca Oxford is enough, I don’t want to give you
many names.
Doctor: Cohen for example
Zainab: Shamo
that's right. All these people are leaders of research on learning startegies. These

14
three waves of research relate to what? Relate to the emergence of this strategic
competence as a component of communicative competence. Advances made in
discourse analysis on the other hand. Have you studied this course or not?
Discourse analysis started by Professor Coulthard and the Professor Brazil at
Birmingham University in the year 2003. And they published that first book on
discourse analysis and introduction to discourse analysis in 1975. Since that time
discourse analysis became a field of applied linguistics, despite the fact that linguists
say that it is part of linguistics. The idea is that linguists sometimes believe that they
are the only people who study discourse. They don't realize that in education, we
educators use discourse analysis as a method of research for a long time ago.
Anyway, advancement in discourse analysis, led to the emergence of the notion of
discourse competence as the forth component of communicative competence. The
ability to produce as well as understand cohesive and coherent discourse. Tell me the
difference between cohesion and coherence. What's the difference? 
Doctor : cohesive refers to grammatical links, such as “although” ,” but” when you
connected to … or “therefore” this is used when want to express some sort of cause
and effect etc . So, in pronouns for example, this is to know that it refers to
something has been mentioned before, this is for reference. All these grammatical
ties constitute about what we mean about cohesion.
Coherence refers to the logical order of functional links (not clear)in a stretch of
language
The ability to produce as well as understand connected discourse , If you don't
understand the difference between the two, you just connected discourse ,It is
called discourse competence. These led to the emergence of task-based syllabi.
These, that is to say, the so-called strategic competence and discourse competence,
together, they led to the emergence of task-based syllabi. Now, I don’t know what is
that man ? How old do you think he is?
In the 90s years.
How old he is?
I don't think so, but he could be. I think he's over 70 anyway. I think that I'm that old
myself, although I'm 75. He could be 80 maybe. He still uses a stick as he goes
around. This is who?
Students: Chomsky
This is Noam Chomsky. I remember when I saw him when he was still young. When
I saw this particular photo of his, I think that I could not begin myself because he
was still a very young man, and very smart. Now you can see how time affects
human beings.
Doctor : This is Noam Chomsky. Who proposed which notion?
Dania: Linguistic.

15
Doctor : That's right. And what about this old man who seems to be……(not clear)
Dania :Hymes
Doctor: That's Hines, yes. And what about the third man? 
Henry Widdowson
Yes that's right. You can see that he is about to fall down. I knew Henry Widdowson
He was very old even when I was there in 1973.
Student : Is he still alive?
He's still alive. Hymes died three years ago. Hymes died more than three years ago,
in the year 2009.
But looking at their photos, at least it shows you how age affects human beings. If
they hadn't disappeared …If you do something that you are proud of, you can still be
in here and be remembered by other people. Go ahead, be ambitious. Why not? You
can be one of the best in future.
Let's go on. Canale and Swain’s Model of Communicative Competence , this I have
to introduce, I sent the papers to you,by the way. The paper has been sent to you. All
these are off-print in the sense that you cannot find them anywhere. There are things
that I could download from sources which are mostly scanned papers.
Knowledge of language, we call it what? [
So you can use either knowledge of language. What does it consist of?
The first component of communicative competence that we talked about most so
far, is this one. And linguistic competence means what?

Knowledge of form, in general. Knowledge of syntax, knowledge of morphology,

the structure of words, and knowledge of phonology, the structure of phoneme, the
structure of sound. Now, knowledge of form, in particular syntax, was done be who?
Chomsky.
Noam Chomksy, in particular. And in this led to what? What kind of syllabus?
Structural syllabus.
Structural syllabus. Later on we had Dill Hymes and pragmatic competence. He
called it sociolinguistic competence because pragmatics was not known. Don't forget
this. Now, Use of it refers to what? Use of forms to perform speech acts in social
situations appropriately. That's what it means, this component. And What is the
branch of the linguistics that studies this aspect of knowledge of language?
Pragmatics
Pragmatics, and what is the syllabus it led to?
Notional functional.
That's right, notional functional syllabus.

16
Then I explained, (3ashan ma 7addesh yogol) I explained something in one way .
(ana balla 3’at allahoma fashhad) Once again, what is that?
When did the study of discourse start?
In the '70s
In 73. By who and at what university?
By Brazil and Coulthard - two famous professors of linguistics. And it started by
those two people at Birmingham University. What does it mean? The ability to
understand and produce connective discourse. Connective means cohesive and
coherent. And this is a studied by? By discourse analysis. I mean that branch of
linguistics that deals with discourse competence describes it - discourse analysis.
What did it lead to? You want to know, how can you produce discourse? We have
these two components - strategic competence. Strategic competence was studied by -
it is the ability to negotiate meaning and avoiding communication breakdown -
started by foreigner talk and communication strategies. Both discourse analysis and
strategic competence led to the emergence of task-based syllabi. Can you see that
syllabus design is usually associated with progress made in linguistics or not?
Is that clear?
yes
Okay, good. If you have any question, I'm ready to take the question and answer it.
Any question, my daughters? That's how I look upon you, as my daughters.
Task two: Criteria for assessing models of communicative competence because
several other models for characterizing communicative competence started to
emerge after the publication of the paper by Canale and Swain in the year 1980, In
the first issue of applied linguistics - can you imagine it – in the first issue of a
journal called applied linguistics, an article by Canale and Swain. Both of them are
Canadians. How can we assess models of communicative competence? Because now
we have about 20 models. I choose only four of them. We know why. Several
models of communicative competence have been developed. See a list of those
models in Google images. You know Google images or not? Write down in the
search engine; write down models of communicative competence.
So I advise you to read that paper because it makes a good comparison between all
these models. See a list of those models in Google images, write models of
communicative competence and you will get hundreds. 
What are the criteria that can be used for assessing models of communicative
competence? Here you are, these are the criterion. Number one, is it appropriate for
language teaching? Some models are not. Some models proposed in the literature are
not good for language education. This is a major criteria. Is it appropriate for
language education or not. Number two, have linguists been able to describe - that's
to say, identify and characterize its components. At least six or seven years ago, we

17
 heard about the so-called intercultural competence - the ability to interact with
people from different cultures without stereotyping. You the meaning of stereotyping
or not ?
Yes
You don’t have to stereotype other people, I’m going to talk about that in future. I
prefer you….. to read a fantastic article published by somebody called Guest.
In linguistics, are you stereotyping or not?
Yes.
You don't have to stereotype other people. I'm going to talk about that in future and I
will [steer?] you to a fantastic article published by somebody called Guest. This is a
name here, not a word.
And again, is there a clear line of demarcation. You know the meaning of
demarcation? The distinction between its different components, some of them
have components which overlap. These are the main criteria, but there's a lot
more. Not as if having application for both syllabus design and classroom
instruction, I think why I said that the first three are the first three major
criteria, because the last is an application or ….
Student: not clear
And here you are, chronological evolution of the proposed model by Celce-Murcia I
got this comparison from Celce-Murcia or probably-- I don't remember exactly
where I got it from. It could be from Google images. Why not? Hello?
Yes
The first model (…..) not clear model - of communicative competence, because
when we say Bill Hymes linguistic competence plus pragmatic competence. That is
it. Is that clear?
Yes.
CanCanale and Swain in 1980 published their own model which consisted of three, four
components actually, the first one is grammatical competence. The second one is
strategic competence. The third one is sociolinguistic competence. Why did they
call it pragmatic competence? Because in 1980, pragmatics was still embryonic. I
don't know whether you know the meaning of embryo or not? Whats's embryo?
Embryonic means something that hasn't grown up and be shaped. At that time, in
1980, pragmatics was embryonic.
In 1983, three books were published on the study of pragmatics. Pragmatics by
Levinson, pragmatics by Geoffrey Leech, if you remember - I think one of the few
people interested in pragmatics, from a long time ago up till now. And again, almost
all my research depended on discourse analysis and the pragmatics- in the war, in my
PhD, and in my Ma.
What about the last one - sociolinguistic competence? Grammatical competence,

18
strategic competence, the ability to negotiate and avoid communication breakdown.
Sociolinguistic competence or pragmatic competence, the ability to use language or
forms in order to perform speech acts, and finally discourse competence the ability to
use and understand cohesive and coherent discourse. That was Canale and Swain .
Followed by a paper by his name alone . And he kept to grammatical competence,
strategic competence, and sociolinguistic competence. Somehow he did not include
discourse competence. I don't know why, although I consider it to be a major
component of communicative competence.
Our proposed model that was? The proposed model by who? By who?
By Celce-Murcia
Linguistic competence, all of them agree that it is a component , Although this is the
oldest component studied by linguists. Strategic competence is well-known. Socio-
cultural competence - that's pragmatic competence. Marianne Celce-Murcia said
Socio-cultural competence refers to intercultural competence. Actional competence
is the one that we can call pragmatic competence. And finally discourse competence.
Can you see the development of different models?
Yes.
Yes, please.
Dania: …….(not clear)
When he says actional, that means ……. That model was proposed by I think by
Celce-Murcia the last one not by Canale and Swain, Canale and Swain are almost the
same 1980 and 1983. I think this is one of the most widely used model that of Canale
and Swain because it is very well defined - the different components.
Celce-Murcia model, the first component is socio-cultural competence. What does it
mean? Number one, the speaker’s pragmatic knowledge, which includes social
contextual factors, stylistic appropriateness whether it is appropriate in that situation
or not . Again, cultural factors, which means that you should know something about
the target culture only? Hello? Target culture only?
No.
Later on, I will give you a detailed account of what intercultural means - intercultural
competence means. You will find out that the study of culture in language teaching
pass through three stages. Number one, teaching the target culture …….(not clear)
Number two, teaching the target culture, a mixture of the target culture, and the
source culture. That is to say the native language culture. I remember When I studied
English in the secondry school there were even topics about (Sham l nessem). (Sham
l nessem),it is something related to ancient fails. Why should we study (Sham l
nessem).? We know about it, and people were disliking the book because it told them
about something related to their own culture. This is called bi-culturalism. Bi means
two - B-I. Bi-culturalism. In other words teaching the student native culture and the
target culture as well. Is that clear? 

19
The third one is intercultural competence. Why? Because English is no longer the
language of the British people anymore. It has become an international language.
You just go anywhere all over the world and try to communicate with someone, and
he will be able to find someone else who can help you communicate with him even if
you dont know his language or speaking English. English now is getting like a lingua
franca. Something that can be used for communication internationally.
Are we still talking about British English ? What about American English? British?
English? Scottish English? Welsh English? Southern England English? Where you
hear a word like butter pronounced as (ba2r). You can't imagine it. The t is usually
changing into a glottal stop (hamza)?. , glottal stop , right? Again, Indian English.
"How old are you?" he will say. The indian will say, "I'm tirty." They know English.
And how old is your wife? She is tirty two. You will never say that. Ask an
Egyptian. How old are you? he will say sirty. He never say thirty. How old is your
wife? She is sirty two. S sound not th sound , Right? Do you understand what I
mean?
Yes
Actually, if you listen to your own English, Saudi English, you can talk about Saudi
English, Indian English, Egyptian English, ….the idea is that there are hundred of
Englishes.

A very famous linguist British linguist - called Christian. Have you heard about
him?
Dania : He talked about ………. Not clear .
That's right. Christian is talking about world Englishes. He is using the plural form
of English. In a cover story of Time, he published an article with this “the death of
English”. When I read it he predicted that English will be divided or developed into
so many Englishes, and eventually each of these will be a different language of its
own. Nobody can believe such a thing because the British people and the American
people are making it some sort of …………(not clear) war. (bel nesba lehom ga6’yat
7ayat o moot) not like us forgetting about our standard English(I think he means
Arabic not English) which is according to the language of the Holy Quran ,(le anana
naymeen 3ala nafsena).
Again, discourse competence. Let's look at the components of discourse
competence. It is the center of her words - discourse competence.
Discourse competence is a center, yes. The selection, sequencing, and the
arrangement of word structures and utterances to achieve a unified spoken message.
This is a very bad definition of theirs. I should say the ability to.
Student interrupted him
right you are. Yes. Cohesion and coherence, do you know the difference or not?
Yes.

20
Cohesion means grammatical ties . Coherence, the order of speech acts in a test.
Generic structure, who is the genius who can tell me what's meant by generic
structure of discourse? 
In discourse analysis, how do you study something like mediumdiscourse? (Not clear
)How do you study something like, let's say announcements discourse?
You can think of hundreds of genres. Genre is a type of discourse structure. The idea
is that knowledge of the generic structure, that is the generic structure of discourse.
That's the structure of each type of discourse.
Again, what is the next component? The next component - linguistic competence.
What does it consist of? Knowledge of form - phonology, lexis, and morphology, the
structure of words. And finally, syntactic. This is well known, the oldest of them all.
Again, formulaic competence, do you say, kick a ball or shoot a ball?
Students : Kick a ball.
So kick collocates with ball? Do you see? Do you understand? Do you do use them
often in conversation? Do you use it often in conversations or not?
Students :Yes
These are formulas. In other words, canned phrases. Phrases which never change.
You know? You understand? And some people call them - especially in Canada -
call them conversational gambits. Conversational what? Gambits. G-A-M-B for
book-I-T-S. Gambits. These are formulas which are used for managing
conversations. Again, fixed and refabricated chunks of language. I think this is what
I mean, that speakers use heavily in everyday interaction to manage interaction or
conversation such as routines, calculations, and idioms. These are formulaic
competence. The problem is, do we have really a full description of that component?
I have a number of books on them, but to tell you the truth, yes, there's a book on
idioms in the college collection, but what about routines? It is not a full description.
They are not fully described at all. Interactional competence unfortunately she
developed (not clear)by it . But she said that it consists of a number of of sub-
components. So the first one is the actional competence - means a speech act,
knowledge of a speech act, knowledge of how to perform speech acts. Actional
competence within the interaction competence. Again, conversational competence,
use of conversation gambits (not clear). Can you see that there's some sort of
overlap?
Yes.
She mentioned routines earlier and now she comes back to calculations again. Non-
verbal or bi-linguistic components.
Student : Body language.
Doctor : Body language. That's right. You are quite right. Yes. Again, you can see
that there's some sort of overlap. Strategic competence, again not defined. Not

21
defined by Celce-Murcia .
Again Learning and communication strategies, both of them, that's all. Implications
in phonic language pedagogy or teaching, here are the implications. Culture and the
language cannot be separated. Earlier people talked about the need to focus on native
culture, teach Saudi about their culture, don't introduce the foreign language culture
because it is going to be threatening to the society. (da kan zaman)

Cultural language cannot be separated; at the moment we understand this from the
characterization of models of communicative competence. Can we explain them?
We can't. Language items should be contextualized -  put in context. We know for
sure now that in language teaching we should not teach language items isolated.
They should be used in a context. We need to balance language as system and
language as form maybe in use of films and video clips in socities to the lighter (not
clear) aspects of interaction, and we need to incorporate strategic terms (not clear )in
our courses. but can we really do such a thing? Hopefully we can. Appraisal of this
model. I will stop immediately after I finish this. We still have four or five minutes.
Pros - you know the meaning of pros?
Yes.
And cons?
Yes.
What does it mean - pros and cons?
Advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages and disadvantages. Arguments for and arguments against. Here are the
pros. It's a comprehensive model, isn't it?
Yes.
It includes almost all we have mentioned in earlier models. What about this? It
involves detailed analysis of sub-components.
What about the arguments against?
Number one, unrealistic as a basis for teaching a foreign language. Some
components may not be teachable in EFL. How can I teach the body language? Do
you want our students to forget all about their identity? If you speak like an
American or a British, you will lose your identity. It's quite enough to have an accent
which is similar to theirs, but to talk about using kinesics and body language like
them is like saying, “Well, you have to just disregard your real Saudi identity," so it
is unrealistic. Components involve a lot of overlap, as you must have seen, right?
yes
Now propose the lesson plan she gave in her paper is simply unrealistic. Nobody
would ever design their lesson plan in this way.

22
Again, the other two components of the interactional competence may better
subsumed under discourse competence.
Just go the …….(not clear) that non-verbal competence may be inappropriate in
some cultures such as Saudi Arabia. Just imagine somebody chatting (be ysolef m3
wa7ed),You have your own body language, how can I force you to avoid using your
own? Interactional competence and strategic competence are left with no definitions.
The formulaic language might be viewed as part of linguistic competence. Okay?
yes
Now these are my own criticism. The characterization of the sociocultural
competence reflects the traditional paradigm of teaching the target culture. Although
she said that she wants it to mean intercultural competence, in their discussion of that
component, she seems to be talking about teaching the target culture - the culture of
the British or the Americans.
Finally, there is no mention of any indications in the syllabus design, only in
teaching. Only in teaching, and she never mentioned anything about syllabus design.
And finally, most of the components she adds to this new version of her model, have
not been described by linguists. And if something hasn't been described by linguists,
have linguists describe the body language?. If linguists haven't found that then I
think that we should stop now. And I'm sorry if my lecture has been causing you
headache.

23